Digital Citizenship for ALL Students!

As a district-level Instructional Technology Specialist, I have the opportunity to travel to many campuses in my school district. I am a little partial to the schools where the staff closely reflects the makeup of its students. The math department at one of my favorite schools looks like this.

Photo by Yamicii Wilson (@ElectrifyingEdu). Used with permission.

I know (and love) many of these teachers personally, and this picture makes my heart happy for lots of reasons. Mostly I think how lucky the students are at that school to be able to see their potential future selves as a “math person” or a “science person” — because all of the curricular teams at this campus look a lot like this. I know that faculties like this do not get created and nurtured by accident; they happen because someone sets out with intention to make them happen. I’m thankful for principals who work to intentionally build strong — and diverse — teams.

There are four of us in my school district who have my job title, and I so appreciate that I get to work closely with amazing people who don’t look like me. (My coworkers joke that we have diversity because I am old, which isn’t quite as funny to me as it seems to be to them).

I have learned so much from them, not only about technology and teaching and collaboration, but also about inclusivity and listening. My co-workers relate their lived experience — as I share mine — and because I try to listen, I believe I have become a lot more thoughtful and intentional in my relationships and in my profession. I have worked intentionally to build my PLN in the past several years to ensure that I am following people whose perspectives and experiences might be very different from mine. Hearing the experiences and opinions of educators who work in different environments (rural, urban, global) has helped me to think more deeply about issues that are important to me. My PLN is full of educators and other professionals who care about digital citizenship and want digital spaces to be more positive places for students. I’m thankful for my cool team members and for technology that allows me to connect to so many other amazing educators.

I’ve been kind of obsessed with the topic of digital citizenship for several years now, and I feel privileged to serve as the co-chair of ISTE’s Digital Citizenship PLN (@DigCitPLN) for 2017–2018. So as much as I have tried to cultivate a PLN with varying perspectives, it was a little startling to see at the face-to-face PLN meeting in June last year at the ISTE conference in San Antonio how… well, monochromatic the attendees were. One of my very heartfelt goals for the @DigCitPLN is that it become a lot more like that math department I mentioned above. I would like to very sincerely and humbly ask that any readers of this post who have not previously felt welcomed or invited to participate in the #digcit conversation to consider adding your voice to the mix. Our new website is http://bit.ly/digcitpln, and among the ways that you can participate are:

join one of our interest groups

volunteer to lead a Twitter chat

nominate a “Digital Citizenship Champion” — a student or educator who is doing a great job in digital spaces

be a guest blogger on our site

tell us what you think our PLN needs to do to be more fully inclusive

I want the @DigCitPLN to better represent ALL educators so that ALL students will have the very best role models for digital citizenship. I want students to think about their potential future selves not only as math or science professionals, but also as outstanding digital citizens. I hope you’ll join the ever-growing community of educators who are committed to showing students how to be the very best citizens — digital and otherwise.